Carl
Favorite Answer
Well they would have to call Jehovah a liar when He states there is no other God with Him and that beside Him there is no other Saviour.
Isa 43:10 Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am He: before Me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after Me.
Isa 43:11 I, even I, am the LORD; and beside Me there is no Saviour.
So, either Jehovah is lying or the Jehovah's Witnesses are, they cannot say Jesus is the Truth if they say He is some inferior created god.
Lil Miss Sunshine
So- they are showing their polytheistic side, huh?
Exodus 4:16 does not say Moses is a god. Here is what it says... He will speak to the people for you, and it will be as if he were your mouth and as if you were God to him.
Exodus 7:1- In Exodus 7.1, God assigned roles to Moses and Aaron. Moses was to function as "God" to Pharaoh and Aaron was to function as the prophet of Moses. Based on Exodus 7.1, we can arrive at the conclusion that the job that a prophet does for God is the same job that God assigned Aaron to do for Moses. If you read the whole chapter, which JW's rarely do, you will see that God has Moses and Aaron pretending that they are God and the prophet and He is actually performing all of the things that Moses and Aaron tell the pharoh are happening.
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+7&version=NIV
Psalm 82:6 has the word god in quotation marks because the men are doing only the work that God is allowed to do by judging men. Psalm 82:1-8
1 God presides in the great assembly;
he renders judgment among the “gods”:
2 “How long will you[a] defend the unjust
and show partiality to the wicked?[b]
3 Defend the weak and the fatherless;
uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.
4 Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.
5 “The ‘gods’ know nothing, they understand nothing.
They walk about in darkness;
all the foundations of the earth are shaken.
6 “I said, ‘You are “gods”;
you are all sons of the Most High.’
7 But you will die like mere mortals;
you will fall like every other ruler.”
8 Rise up, O God, judge the earth,
for all the nations are your inheritance.
It is common sense. Gods do not die like man. God is saying you think yourselves to be gods, but you are not.
See how the witnesses take one scripture and make it out to mean what they want it to mean without reading the ones around it? You just can't do that with the bible.
TJ Can't Lose
It is the Bible that says, quite literally, that Jesus is "the truth" and also "a god". (John 14:6; 1:1) In the case of John 1:1, if you read the original Greek, you'll see there is a clear distinguishing factor between the first occurrence of "God" (referring to the Father) and the second (referring to "the Word", i.e. Jesus) that is *not* present in most English translations. The first occurrence of the word "God" has the article with it, which is similar to our word "the". The second occurrence does not have this. In effect, as most scholars will acknowledge, this makes the first instance of "God" point to an identity, i.e. it is God himself, whereas the second, in contrast to it (being without the article), points to a quality or trait of the individual. So does it mean that Jesus is *identified* as "God"? No. It simply means that he exhibits a "divine" quality or is "a god" in some sense.
Of course, if you're not familiar with Greek, many translations do quite a disservice to you in this instance, because they try to make the Greek say more about Jesus' divinity than the verse actually says. You may be thinking, 'but the Bible says there's only one God.' That's true, but who is it? "There is actually to us one God, the Father." (1 Cor. 8:6) Yet any good Bible dictionary will list certain servants of God as also being called 'gods' in a *limited* sense. For example, Moses was 'a god'. (Exodus 4:16; 7:1) Also Israelite judges were often referred to as 'gods', even by God himself! (Psalm 82:6) So if these ones could properly carry the title "God" or "god" in a sense, certainly Jesus could as well.
Think about it. What was needed to provide the sacrifice to buy back Adam's children from sin and death? Was it the death of God himself? No. God's principle of justice is to make atonement by repaying the value of what was lost. So an 'eye for eye' kind of system. What did our forefather Adam lose? Wasn't it what God had originally given to him, i.e. perfect, sinless human life with the prospect to live forever? So if that's what was lost, it would require the payment of the same thing to give that back to Adam's descendents. We needed, not the sacrifice of God, but the sacrifice of another 'Adam'. The Bible actually calls Jesus "the last Adam" because he had become a perfect and sinless human being, nothing more. (1 Cor. 15:45)
Consider these issues for awhile and even take a look at the publications linked to below. I'd be happy to answer further questions/objections you may have as long as you are sincerely looking for what the Bible teaches.
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@LMS
In your translation of Exodus 4:16, "as if" has been added to it twice, which is NOT present in the Hebrew, to make it function as a type of metaphor. By that same reasoning then, you should have no problem with "as if" or "like" being added to John 1:1c. Or is that a problem for you?
As for Exodus 7:1, even the KJV has "And the LORD said unto Moses, See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh." But presumably you would accuse these translators of polytheism as well, that is, to be consistent, right? You quite discernibly pointed out that at least one translation (though certainly not all) put "gods" in quotation marks in Psalm 82. Again, since the Hebrew text itself didn't have quotation marks there, I can only guess that you should have no objection to it being done on the same basis in John 1:1c--"and the Word was 'god'." Or again, is this a problem here but not at Psalm 82?
Consistency, LMS, is a counter to bias. It's a simple fact that the term "God" is used in the scriptures in a less restrictive sense than what you allow. You're appealing here to translations that *insert* "as if" in front of it and quotation marks around it in certain circumstances (but not others) to qualify the meaning a certain way, all the while charging that we 'make it mean what we want it to mean', and that is just amazingly ironic, if not outright hypocritical.
fineimmune
We follow the bible when it says there are many gods. Even Satan is a god. that truth can be found at 2 Corinthians 4:4. Yes, Jesus is a god. He is however not the Most High God. That belongs to Jehovah as found at Psalms 83:18.
Jesus is the truth because he spoke truth and through him we have the truth. God sent him to speak in his behalf.
TeeM
Vines Dictionary states "The literal meaning "a god was the Word" is misleading"
Why does Vine say the literal translation of John 1:1c is misleading?
Because it doesn't agree with his theology.
Yet it agrees with John's who wrote it.
Revelation 1:6
New American Standard Bible (NASB)
6 and He has made us to be a kingdom, priests to His God and Father
John knew that the glorified Jesus still isn't God.
Revelation 1
The Revelation of Jesus Christ
1 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show to His bond-servants, the things which must soon take place; and He sent and communicated it by His angel to His bond-servant John,
Really this is God's Revelation, Jesus was the channel by which John received it.
.